This is week 6 into my cut down from Dallas and I’m exactly 6lbs down from the trip which was around 6 weeks ago. I went through and averaged everything from my log, so here is a few stats:

Started at 183.5lbs

Currently at 177.5lbs

Average calorie intake eaten was 2000 calories a day

Meaning my average daily burn was around 2500 calories a day

My total calories burned is much higher during the week and less on the weekends. Ex – 2800 cals weekdays – 2400 weekends (not as much walking)

Some of these are estimations and nothing is exactly right, but I feel the averages are pretty close to accurate

I had a feeling my maintenance was less than calorie counters predicted. Either through my history of dieting, overestimation of calories burned or just my naturally slow metabolism through genes. This makes perfect sense to me though as when I usually hit 3000 calories through food, the results are usually not favorable (at least when done for consecutive days. a cheat day at this amount and I look fine the next day). I’m very glad I did this though. Its a very accurate way to get a good gauge of my individual metabolism, so you know what to work with.

So I’m going to keep the progress going, with a few changes. I want to increase my dietary fat to about 70 grams, which it has been around 55-60 grams and keep a light cycle of carbs going. On low days, I want to keep it around 100 grams, on medium days (days I want to lift, but still burn fat) I’m going to increase my carbs to 150-175 grams (200-300 extra cals) and high days (Saturday) I want to hit roughly maintenance of 25-2600 calories with around 1.5 x bw = 270 carbs. So its going to be two low days, one high day and 4 medium days with calories averaging around – 1970 calories over the course of the week.

High day – 25-2600 calories – 270/170/70 – Carbs, Protein, Fat

Medium Day – 1950 calories – 160/170/70 – Carbs, Protein, Fat

Low Day – 1750 calories – 100/170/70 – Carbs, Protein, Fat

Workout is still Push/Pull/OFF/Push/Pull/Legs/Off. I’m going to try a reverse pyramid scheme, which I think I’m really going to like. Basically you warmup and start off with the heaviest weight possible you can lift for about 4-6 reps. You then drop the weight 10% and do two less reps for 6-8 reps, then again for 8-10 reps and so on until you hit your desired number of sets. Its a good way to get strength gains because you start with the heaviest weight when your fresh and whenever you hit the heavy weight first, the subsequent sets feel much lighter. Its a good method for muscle size, because as you decrease the weight the reps also increase. On smaller muscles and isolation exercises, I plan to start at around 8 reps and decrease from there to about 15 reps.

I’m also trying something new with shoulders. After reading more about the muscle group, I think overhead pressing is both unnecessary, overrated and maybe injury prone. I always liked the overhead press, but I felt like it was an unnatural movement, especially with heavier weights. Bench press and incline bench press works the front delt hard and pullups and rowing movements work the posterior delts. Lateral raises hit the medium delts hard and they do so, by working with the proper way shoulders are meant to move (shoulder abduction). In other words, your shoulders will grow just fine with normal push/pull movements and some lateral raises for isolation and they may be much healthier as a result. This was good to read for me, because programming overhead press in my routines was always a pain. If you did them after bench press then they were weak, but if you did them on leg day or back day then they were tired from push day and if you did them on their own then the shoulders would just get worked too often. Its like they didnt fit in anywhere. Now I’m just going to put lateral raises on push day and rear delt raises and shrugs on pull day, problem solved. Also studies show that the overhead press stimulates A LOT of front delt activity with a small portion of medial delt and very small amount of rear delt. Front delts take a beating from Bench press, so again it just seems the overhead press doesnt offer anything else that other movements dont bring. Many lifters also have problems with shoulders down the road when they do too much overhead pressing like shoulder impingement. Not saying I’m not ever going to do the movement again, but for now I’m going to go without it and see what happens. One last thing is most lifters I see do the overhead press do it completely wrong. The bow their back out and shift a ton of the stress to their front delts and upper chest. At that point you might as well just do an incline press because the shoulders aren’t getting worked very hard.

As for my lifts this week, hit 90 pounders on DB bench for 5,5,3 reps. Pullups 30 extra pounds for 6 reps. Trap-bar deadlift was 245×4 reps. Squats were really bad this week at 205 x 6 reps. Must have been running low on carbs at this point. Everything else was fine though.

Some pics from the week:

Post workout Bertuccis Calzone with a salad and banana.

3lb weigh at golds gym. Might as well stay home and curl a can of soup. Not sure what this is 😉

Chipotle for lunch on Sunday. Half chicken and steak, double beans, onions, corn, salsa. Also ate all the cheese and sour cream